Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/126

CHAPTER VIII

SOWAMS AND BARRINGTON

Location of Sowams—Sowhomes Bay—Evidence of Morton, Winslow, Hubbard, Belknap, Winthrop, Dudley—Seekonk Purchase—Consumpsit Neck—Sowams Purchase, 1653—Chachacust or New Meadow Neck—Privileges to John Brown—Rev, John Callender's Record as to John Clarke and Sowams—Roger Williams Located Sowams—Romeo Elton—Sowams Taxed by Plymouth Colony from 1652 to 1667—Brook's Pasture—Laid out 1720—Sowams Records Relate to Barrington Mainly—Early Maps of New England—Review of Evidence—Dutch Trading Post—Story of Northmen—Prof. Munro and Hampden Meadows—Massassoit's Spring and Others.

THE two previous chapters have been devoted to the Sowams Purchase and Proprietary. The present will discuss the location of Sowams.

In my "Historical Sketches of Barrington" I stated what I then believed to be true that Warren was ancient Sowams, following General Fessenden's authority. A study of the subject from other and original sources, not then at my command (1870), has changed my opinion, so that I am fully satisfied that all early authorities sustain my present position, that Barrington and Sowams are territorially one, or that Sowams was within the present territory of Barrington, and that all writers who make Warren the seat of Massassoit's Sachemship have followed General Fessenden's statement rather than original investigations. We both agree that Massassoit had his principal residence at Sowams, and that Sowams had a narrow territorial limit, not identical with Pokanoket,although the Plymouth Patents recognized and considered them as territorially the same. As the true location of Sowams determines the position of the first white settle-